Posts tagged ‘haida gwaii’

This 84-pound female Chinook salmon broke a Queen Charlotte Lodge record and made one fisherman very happy.

It took 30 minutes, weighed 84 pounds and was beyond priceless for Chris Lewis — it was historic.

The Queen Charlotte Lodge guest reeled in the Chinook salmon that broke the famed fishing lodge’s 11-year-old record by more than two pounds. Located in pristine Haida Gwaii — the Galapagos of the North and one of Canada’s greatest treasures — the QCL is a delightful place run with some of the finest people you’ll find in the hospitality industry. Duane Foerter, the marketing manager at QCL, reported to me that Lewis, his fishing partner Stephen Mason and guide Derek Poitras “were fishing along the kelp just east of Klashwun Point when both rods went off in a matter of seconds.”

Mason had hooked a 31-pound Chinook while Lewis battled with his monster catch, reeling in and then letting it run for half an hour until they could force it closer to the boat.

“They could tell by the wide shoulder on the fish that this was no ordinary salmon,” Foerter wrote about the silvery fish caught on August 20 in northwest British Columbia.

HAIDA GWAII, B.C.—The Haida are a matriarchal society, so it seems fitting that Jessica Eussen and the other women who journey to fish these waters would outperform the men. In one of those momentous, tell-it-to-your-grandkids, I-can’t-believe-what-I-just-pulled-off highlights of life, Jessica, a tiny 18-year-old from Vancouver, Washington, reeled in a 43-pound Chinook salmon while on a fishing trip with her father.

The thing was about half the size of her and coaxed a smile just as wide.

“I’ll never forget it,” she said a few minutes after being congratulated by other anglers in awe of the feat as well as the dockhands at the Queen Charlotte Lodge, which has built a reputation as a world-class fishing destination during its nearly two decades of operation.

It attracts avid sports fishermen who come to chase the tyee, or “chief”, a Chinook salmon that weighs at least 30 pounds. But the lodge has succeeded in guiding novices to trophy catches too, as Jessica’s tyee last month proved, and that’s helped it become a choice spot for families and couples.

Jessica’s father, Remy, chose fishing as the activity to spend time with his daughter before she leaves for university because “there are no electronics. It’s quiet, you can really bond.”